Terra Alpha is under the steel fist of Helen A and her executioner, a
sadistic robot made out of sweets called the Kandy Man. Joy is perpetual
on Terra Alpha, because to be unhappy invites the wrath of Helen A's crack
police force, the Happiness Patrol. Allying themselves with Terra Alpha's
repressed natives, the Pipe People, a former Happiness Patrolwoman named
Susan Q and blues player Earl Sigma, the Doctor and Ace must end Helen A's
reign of terror.

Production

Already a singer and an award-winning journalist, Graeme Curry also wanted
to break into screenwriting. His football drama Over The Moon
placed first in a London-area competition, for which one of the judges
was Tony Dinner of the BBC Script Unit. Dinner encouraged Curry to send
his prizewinner to various script editors within the BBC, including
Doctor Who's Andrew Cartmel, who was attempting to build a new
stable of writers for his programme. They met in February 1987, but
while Curry was invited to pitch ideas for Doctor Who, he soon
became discouraged as he struggled to develop something appropriate.

Finally, during the summer, Curry suggested an adventure set on a
planet where unhappy people are persecuted. Cartmel liked the idea and
helped the writer develop it as a commentary on both modern-day
superficiality and the policies of Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher's
Conservative government -- as embodied in the form of the dictator Helen
A. Curry was also amused by the notion of the Doctor arriving on a
planet, and striving to make the populace unhappy. Briefly, the
storyline was referred to as The Happiness Patrol, but by the
time the first episode was commissioned on September 3rd, it had become
“The Crooked Smile”. This would be the studiobound
three-part entry for Season Twenty-Five, which meant that Curry had to
ensure that his world of Terra Alpha could be realised entirely as a
collection of sets.

Graeme Curry and Andrew Cartmel agreed that the
anti-Thatcher spirit of The Happiness Patrol
should be toned down

Two early notions for “The Crooked Smile” quickly fell by
the wayside: in Curry's original conception, muzak was heard all over
Terra Alpha (emphasising the fake, antiseptic nature of Helen A's
society) and the action took place over several weeks as the Doctor
gradually contrived to bring down the government. With the action now
unfolding over just one night, it was decided to have a strong
throughline of blues music, since there was concern that the muzak might
be too annoying and distracting. These changes began to take hold as
Curry worked on his last two scripts, which were commissioned on
September 30th. Helen A's regime would now be starting to crumble prior
to the Doctor's arrival, while Cartmel also agreed with Curry that the
anti-Thatcher spirit should be toned down. During the autumn,
Nathan-Turner encouraged Curry to resurrect The Happiness Patrol as
his story's title.

There were various other amendments as Curry worked on his adventure, now
designated Serial 7L. A prison area called Arcadia, complete with dozens
of fruit machines and an elaborate go-kart game which the captives would
be forced to play, was replaced with the simpler Waiting Zones. In the
Forum, the Doctor and Ace were forced to entertain the audience or be
executed; this was excised because it was felt to be too similar to
elements of another Season Twenty-Five story, The
Greatest Show In The Galaxy. Susan Q was tricked into helping Ace
escape, rather than doing so willingly. The snipers were originally called
Stan S and Sid S, then David S and Alex S, although ultimately neither
name was used onscreen.

The director assigned to The Happiness Patrol was Chris Clough, who
would also be handling the location-only Silver
Nemesis. It was Clough and Nathan-Turner who decided to completely
reinvent the visual look of the Kandy Man. In Curry's scripts, the Kandy
Man was basically human in appearance, albeit moulded out of sugary
materials. Clough and Nathan-Turner wanted his robotic nature to be more
obvious, and so make-up designer Dorka Nieradzik -- using Michelin
Tires' seminal Bibendum mascot as inspiration -- put together an outfit
which looked as though it were literally composed of giant sweets.
Meanwhile, cast as Earl Sigma was Richard D Sharp. The character had
been written as playing a trumpet, but when it was learned that Sharp
had no experience with the instrument, this was revised as a harmonica,
since it would be less conspicuous that the actor was simply miming
along to the soundtrack.

The Kandy Man was written as basically human in
appearance, but the production team wanted his robotic nature to be more
obvious

Recording on The Happiness Patrol began in BBC Television Centre
Studio 3 with the start of a three-day session on July 26th, 1988. Clough
found that the “exteriors” erected in the studio were
cumbersome to work with, severely limiting his ability to plan interesting
camera angles. To compensate, he wanted to give the adventure a film
noir feel by using various off-kilter perspectives, as in the 1949
Orson Welles classic The Third Man. This idea was vetoed by
Nathan-Turner, who worried that the technique would be too disorienting.
The sets for the streets and the Forum square were in use on all three
days, together with the Waiting Zones on the 26th and 27th, and then the
pipes on the 28th. For the Pipe People, it was thought for a time that
they might be achieved using puppets; eventually, however, eight child
actors were hired to play the roles in costume. Conversely, Fifi was
actually several different puppets. The idea of employing an actor was
dismissed because Nathan-Turner wanted Fifi to be comparatively
small.

The production of The Happiness Patrol -- and Season Twenty-Five as
a whole -- then concluded with a two-day block in TC8 starting on
Wednesday, August 10th, with scenes in the Kandy Kitchen a major focus
throughout. Otherwise, the 10th dealt with material in Happiness Patrol
headquarters and Helen A's suite, plus the tyrant's addresses on the
Waiting Zone games machine. The 11th then wrapped up the remaining
sequences in the pipes, as well as those in the Doompipe and the
execution yard. By now, it was already known that Doctor Who
would be returning for a twenty-sixth season; this had been confirmed by
the BBC in June, and although Nathan-Turner expected to be moved onto
other projects, McCoy, Aldred and Cartmel would all be remaining on the
show.

In post-production, all three episodes of The Happiness Patrol were
found to overrun severely, and a number of cuts were made. These included
a scene where the Kandy Man sliced off his own finger only to calmly
reattach it, Susan Q revealing that she was demoted from Susan L because
of a smuggled blues record, and the Doctor escaping at the start of part
two only to return when he realises that Earl Sigma has been captured.
Also dropped was the fondant overwhelming the Kandy Man in the Doompipe,
as Clough was dissatisfied with the execution of the shot. It was only
at this point that Clough's wife, Annie Hulley, was cast as the
Newsreader.

On November 10th, the chairman of Bassett Foods complained
that the Kandy Man infringed on his company's Bertie Bassett
trademark

Having now directed six stories in three years, Clough decided that the
time had come to move on from Doctor Who. He helmed episodes of
programmes such as Casualty and The Bill, before becoming a
producer on the latter. Clough then concentrated on producing, with his
credits including Ballykissangel, Born And Bred,
Skins and The Missing. The Happiness Patrol was
Curry's only contribution to Doctor Who, although his novelisation
was published by Target Books in 1990. He went on to write for The
Bill and EastEnders, as well as the radio drama
Citizens.

Oddly, The Happiness Patrol wound up stoking unlikely
controversies on two occasions separated by more than twenty years. On
November 10th, the day following the broadcast of episode two, HB
“Bev” Stokes, chairman and chief executive of Bassett Foods,
wrote to Nathan-Turner to complain that the Kandy Man infringed on the
trademark of his company's advertising icon, Bertie Bassett. After
investigating the matter, Brian Turner of the BBC Copyright Department
informed Stokes on November 25th that he had determined that no
transgressions had occurred -- although he did promise that the Kandy
Man would not be used again in future storylines.

Then, in February 2010, the anti-Thatcherite slant of The Happiness
Patrol was dredged up by the media in the wake of the intense interest
in Doctor Who following the debut of Matt Smith as the Eleventh
Doctor. The serial's anti-Thatcherite origins were briefly dredged up as
evidence of a partisan and ideological bias within the BBC; nothing came
of this, however, and the would-be scandal dissipated as quickly as it had
materialised.